The cover art is by Earle K. Bergey, and while it’s not as wild or fantastic as I usually like, it really stuck with me. Mostly it’s how the rocketship plowed into the planet like a lawn dart, no crumpling, no debris. But that’s what I love about pulps — maybe the planet is soft? Yeah, that’s the ticket — it’s soft, made of living tissue, and that’s why the tentacles are attacking the stranded crew. It’s just a defense mechanism.

And that’s why I’m a pulp sci fi fan, and why I wanted to make Cosmic Patrol! Take one sweet piece of art and bam! — adventure!

CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT!

We ran a contest for writing/art spots in the next Cosmic Patrol book, Into the Cosmos. It ended Dec. 1 and took me a long time to pick the winners out—all the entries were amazing. That said, they are chosen and I’ll be announcing the winners this week. I just have to wrap a fews things up before I can send out the omniwave communique.

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12 2011

It doesn’t get much better than this! The cover from Imagination’s June 1954 issue features “Slaves to the Metal Horde” by Milton Lesser (aka Stephen Marlowe, see last Atomolink).

The cover has everything you could hope for in a sci fi pulp: distressed woman in torn clothes, fantastical robot threatening her and an awesomely intriguing title. It doesn’t take much effort to see how you can create a game scenario based on the art.

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06 2011

After too long a break, it’s time to restart Atomolinks! I’m going to take a break from spotlighting cover art and feature an author that I’ve really grown to like, Stephen Marlowe. Like so many other writers from the pulp era, Marlowe wrote under many different names: Adam Chase, Milton Lesser, C.H. Thames, Andrew Frazer, Jason Ridgeway and Ellery Queen. So, if you’ve a pulp sci fi, adventure or mystery fan, there’s a decent chance you’re read his work without knowing it.

There’s a nice bibliography of Marlowe’s work over at Wikipedia, but I’m going to focus on the first story of his that I read, The Graveyard of Space. Graveyard was published under the name Milton Lesser and first appeared in the April 1956 issue of Imagination magazine.

The plot is fairly straightforward – a couple is traveling back to Earth after a failed uranium mining operation on an asteroid. The two are unhappy, and all signs point to them splitting up once they get home. There’s guilt from the failure and a general sense of guilt from the impending failure of their relationship. They’re taking an old rocket home, a “battered old Gormann ’87.”

On the way, they fall into a sargasso of space – a roaming gravity anomaly that pulls them in and strands them, damaging their ship and leaving them helpless. But – and this is the part that really hooked me – they’re not alone. Over the years, this roaming anomaly has snagged dozens and dozens of other ships, dooming the crews of those ships to death from starvation, suffocation, and grimly, cannibalism.

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05 2011

When you start talking about pulp science fiction magazines, many people immediately mention the classic, colorful, lurid covers of the era – and rightly so. The astounding cover art is what really make the pulp era memorable, even for those of us that weren’t alive at the time (like me!). But what many people forget about is the interior art which, while generally black and white line art, could be just as excellent.

09 2010

I’ve become a huge fan of Decoder Ring Theatre since a friend showed me the light a few weeks ago. DRT produces pulpy audio dramas like the radio shows popular in the 1940s-50s. While their two main shows – The Red Panda and Black Jack Justice – are excellent to listen to, they’re not quite Atomolink material. No rayguns? No robots? Sorry, gotta pass.

Deck Gibson is everything you could ever want in a retro-space audio show. Atomic cannons, space fighters, damsels in distress, arch rivals and vicious aliens to say the very least! The show is full of things you could use in a Cosmic Patrol game session, and I can’t recommend it enough. Check it out, you won’t be sorry!

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08 2010

Dark Roasted Blend is one of my favorite blogs. I can get lost for hours just clicking around the website, checking out the wacky things they find. DRB had a great post in 2008 that I’ve had bookmarked for a while, and it’s time to share.

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06 2010

Amazing cover art is synonymous with the science fiction pulps, and in many cases, was key to their popularity. Kelly Freas was one of the best artists and definitely one of my favorites. Lucky for us, you can check out Northern Star Art for a huge selection of prints, posters and other pieces – some actually signed by Freas! The prices are incredibly good – I purchased a lot of six of Freas’ Planet Stories covers for a paltry $19.99 and was impressed at the quality of the prints. I don’t say it often, but they should be charging more!